application-aware storage
Application-aware storage is a storage system with built-in intelligence about relevant applications and their utilization patterns. Once the storage "understands" the applications and usage conditions, it is possible to optimize data layouts, caching behaviors, and quality of service (
QoS) levels. This is a particularly challenging goal because application-aware storage does not run application code locally. Instead, it demands significant
integration between the operating system (OS), the host bus adapter (
HBA), and the applications themselves.
Application-aware storage allows storage managers to better utilize commodity disks for low-priority applications, while still getting the best possible performance, capacity and reliability for mission critical applications. Application awareness can be particularly useful for boosting performance in storage-intensive tasks such as archiving, backups, disaster recovery, replication, data modeling, and index/search.
Contributor(s): Stephen J. Bigelow
This was last updated in July 2007
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